For anybody interested there is a new SONY demo clip showing on the ASTRA HD channel, only about 5.5 Min long but excellent quality. The total loop is about 9.5 Min long (4Min of old clips). The new HD Forum loop at 5 West is also showing about 3 SONY clips (which also look great) in their 2 Hour loop. Jim.
I've been searching for demo material. I have regular Sky TV set up. Can I see the ASTRA sat with this equipment? It would be a major pain to move the dish or buy extra equipment for 5.5 Min's of material. Can I record the feed to a PC/DVD and get HD play back on a DVD player? Thanks JJ
$ky digiboxes can only handle 2 symbol rates- 27500 and 22000. They are also very user hostile when used on other satellites (you have to use the "Add Channels" menu). The $ky boxes' MPEG decoders cannot handle HD encoded MPEG streams. Only boxes like the QualiTV QS1080, the Integra IT912S and some of the Zinwell ones have suitable (higher powered) MPEG decoders. It can be decoded using a PC satellite tuner card (Twinhan, Skystar & Broadlogic are examples) but in this case the PC does the MPEG decoding and needs to use a 2.5 GHz CPU as a minimum. Chris Muriel, (normally Manchester but currently working in Limerick).
Just buy a Skystar 2 card for HD. These are excellent cards and cheap. ie there's 2 on ebay at the moment. 1 auction finishes in 90 mins though so hope you are reading this ! The video quality is great even on normal channels esp with a TFT monitor though as has been said you do need a newish pc with plenty of RAM etc
This loop has changed again. The SONY clip is gone and they are showing a sort of SPAR promotion/advert. It must have been shot with the camera in progressive mode because the fast pan shots are a bit jittery, good otherwise. Jim
The ASTRA HD loop has changed again in the last few days. Some of the previous SONY material and some stunning new wild life footage with superimposed graphics and promotional slogans like "ASTRA making HD happen" Jim.